Reizen / Morishige

Empty Gallery is pleased to invite you to an evening of solo and duo performances by two of Tokyo’s most interesting young experimental musicians: Atsushi Reizen (electric guitar) and Yasumune Morishige (cello). Each of them will perform a short set demonstrating their solo practice, before coming together in a collaborative performance for two grand pianos – in which their respective approaches to improvisation on stringed instruments merge. Unlike the older generation of acknowledged masters (names like Keiji Haino, Makoto Kawabata, and Otomo Yoshihide come to mind) this younger group of players has received little attention outside of their native country – and it is our pleasure to invite them both to Hong Kong for the first time.

Reizen’s music could be described as an exquisitely reduced take on guitar drone, synthesizing an admitted influence from the minimalist avant-garde (La Monte Young, Arnold Dreyblatt, Catherine Christer Hennix and others) with an interest in both noise music and ambient electronica – a surprising mixture which brings a sense of freshness and freedom from musical ideology to his sound. In performance, Reizen combines the glacial pacing and keen attention to acoustic phenomena of the Minimalists with the diaphanous textures and cyclical structure of electronic music to create a meditative experience of the highest order.

Yasumune Morishige is an improvising cellist and pianist, perhaps best known internationally for his role as the bassist of Keiji Haino’s current incarnation of Fushitsusha. As a solo musician, he continuously explores the acoustic cello as an improvisor who freely combines the timbral innovation characteristic of improvised music with both an interest in spontaneously evolving structures, and an unusually expressive style.